Jayne sank down gratefully into the easy chair, favouring the healing wound in his chest. It was his first day being allowed out of his bunk without being under scrutiny, and he was feeling as weak as a kitten. He’d been shot before, more’n likely would be again, but it never got any better. Pretty soon, he surmised, he’d have so much scar tissue bullets’d just bounce right off him. He laughed to himself, then grimaced. Couldn’t be too soon, as far as he was concerned.

“Uncle Jayne?” Bethany was sitting on the stairs, just able to look down at him.

“Hey there, short stub.” He grinned at her. “You gonna come and keep me company?”

“Don’t want to hurt you.” Her brown eyes were serious.

“Can’t hurt me, Beth. I’m indestructible.” She gave him a version of River’s boob look, and he grinned wider. “Okay. Just go easy.”

She smiled brilliantly and scampered down the stairs so fast he was afraid she would fall, and he wasn’t going to be able to catch her, but she was surprisingly sure-footed for a two year old, and in a moment she was standing looking up into his face.

“Hello, Uncle Jayne,” she said formally.

“Hi, squirt.” He lifted his arm and she climbed carefully into his lap, somehow managing to avoid the area of his wound.

She looked at him, her eyes ranging across his face. “Are you dying?” she asked, her voice solemn.

“What? Who told you that?”

“No-one.”

“Ain’t gonna die, Bethie.”

“Jethro did.”

Jayne was surprised. “Yep,” he said slowly. “That he did.”

“Did you make him dead?”

There was a tug of something in his gut, and it wasn’t Simon’s handiwork. “If’n you mean, did I shoot him, no.”

“Then why are you hurting?” Bethany wanted to know.

“I was the one got shot, girl!” he protested.

“Don’t mean there.” She laid her little hand, very gently, on the wound. “Mean there.” She touched above his heart.

He stared at her. “Who’s been talking to you, Beth?”

“No-one,” she admitted. “I’m a baby. No-one talks to babies.”

“Then you’